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Tuesday, January 12, 2016

The Creature Commandos – Weird Comic Bookery

More Pathos
Than Horror

They say that war is hell, and if (as Pat Benatar
said) hell is for children, then war is for children. And what do children like
more than analogues of classic Universal movie monsters? Nothing, that’s what!
Kids today continue to thrill to the 1950s versions of the vampire Dracula and
Frankenstein’s monster, still gasp at the sight of the Wolfman while they ride
their Schwinn Phantoms around with
baseball cards in the wheels’ spokes to simulate the puttering of a motorcycle
as they turn. Yes, fun is yet to be had at the Candy Shoppe where a
skilled soda jerk can…what’s that? You don’t know what the fuck I’m talking
about? No, you are a doddering old
fool living in the past! Why, I’ll have you know that versions of the Universal
movie monsters were in a comic book as recently as 1980! What?! That was over thirty-five years ago?! I think I need a drink. Read on while I sit and wonder
what the hell I’ve been doing for the last several decades.

It’s strange but true that there was a time when
classic monsters were banned from appearing in comic books, at least those that
sought the seal of the Comics Code Authority. Amorphous, monstrous blobs and dubious
spectral possessions were allowed, but there could be no vampires, mummies,
creatures from lagoons of any color, werewolves or other were-beings, not even
ghouls or zombies! This gave rise to the horror magazine, such as those
produced by Warren Publishing. These were black & white horror comics, with
some movie stills and text stories inserted to justify their being
placed with more adult fare at the magazine rack instead of adjacent to copies of Uncle Scrooge. Books like Vampirella and Eerie followed a similar format to MAD Magazine, except they used horror instead of humor. And sometimes
humor. Anyway, this article isn’t about Warren
Publishing, though its founder James Warren and his career are worthwhile subjects.

Let's start a rock n' roll band!

In 1971, the Comics Code Authority would relax their
restrictions on monsters, and Marvel capitalized almost instantly with popular
titles Werewolf By Night and Tomb of Dracula, the latter of which
would bring us the popular vampire-killing hero Blade. DC Comics would also
capitalize on this rewriting of the Code…nine years later with the debut of the
Creature Commandos in Weird War Tales
#93. Yet their creation was not so much related to the Comics Code as it was the
DC Implosion of 1978, which saw the cancellation of more than two dozen titles
and a revamping of their entire publishing plan. Since the number of titles
being produced was slashed, creator J. M. DeMatteis worried that he would be
getting less or no work from DC Comics in the foreseeable future, so he pitched
the Creature Commandos—a U.S. Army squadron of monstrous freaks (and one
regular human guy) fighting during World War II—to editor Len Wein, who decided
to give it a shot because that dude is really out there. I mean, I don’t know
him, but this guy created Swamp Thing. And you ever see that rendering of him as
one of the parade party attendees in Batman
#237? All shaggy hair and counterculture goatee…yeah, we know what he was
up to.

When bickering conjoined twins and a fish-headed man are calling you ugly, that's harsh.

The Creature Commandos were a group of soldiers and a couple civilians who, one way or another, came under the scope of secret Project M, a military
initiative essentially defined as “make things wacky.” The team was led by Lt.
Matthew Shrieve, a normal, healthy person whose life hadn’t been destroyed by
mad scientists; Warren Griffith, a civilian who suffered from lycanthropy and
became a werewolf with the help of Project M; Sgt. Vincent Velcro, who escaped
a life in the brig by submitting to dangerous experiments that would turn him
into a vampire; Dr. Myrra “Medusa” Rhodes, a military doctor and plastic
surgeon whose hair turned into snakes after she inhaled the fumes from some
haphazardly-mixed chemicals; and Pvt. Elliot “Lucky” Taylor, whose body was
blown apart by a land mine and then stitched together and reanimated much like
Frankenstein’s monster. Later, the team would be joined by the mechanical
J.A.K.E. and even later on, J.A.K.E. 2, aka G.I. Robot.

Don't ask, don't tell.

Conceived as a bit of a laugh, the adventures and
lives of the Creature Commandos were often anything but. For one thing, Lt.
Shrieve routinely treated all of them like complete shit, calling them freaks
and reminding them that they were disgusting and would therefore never return
to civilized life. And this was no tough love by a grizzled veteran, he really
had nothing but contempt for them and his lot as their commanding officer. Yet
that didn’t stop him from ordering them into the heart of the most dangerous
situations imaginable while he bullied them from relative safety. You know how
some leaders wont task their underlings with things they wouldn’t do
themselves? Yeah, Shrieve never heard that one. Also, their missions were
usually depressing as fuck (which was somewhat standard fare for the war comic
genre), yet the fact that human atrocities were observed and committed by
beings that were atrocities themselves cast an even more somber mood than usual
on these funnybooks. Very early on in the series, in The Children’s Crusade (Weird War Tales #102, August 1981), the
Commandos go to a Nazi camp where children are being subjected to cruel tests
that will make them into super soldiers—and I mean children, of eight or nine
in short pants and pinafore skirts—and they have to murder them all, watching
some suffer and bloat with chemical enhancers coursing through their veins. Hey
kids! Comics!

If it's any consolation, she would have grown up to be a Kardashian.

The angst and loneliness suffered by the Creature
Commandos was, in some ways, more acute and real than that exhibited by the
Doom Patrol: while the latter team’s exploits were covered by the media and
they were largely accepted by the public at large, the Creature Commandos dealt
in black operations, darkly heroic acts unknown by the average citizen and
therefore resulted in none of their admiration. Indeed, nearly every story during their
run in Weird War Tales showcased some
cruel shunning by the public; in issue #117’s story A Miracle For Monsters!, Sgt. Velcro saves a little girl from
falling to her death from the Eiffel Tower, and he’s still chased away by
French gendarme. Like, what the fuck do these guys have to do? Blow everybody?
Probably not a good idea with Sgt. Velcro. Not Pvt. Taylor, either. Frankly, I
think this is a rare situation where free sex might not be the solution to unpopularity.

"On the other hand, my shirt sleeve isn't covered in kid's boogers."

The series ended with Weird War Tales #124 (June 1983) in Destination Unknown!, when they are sentenced to death by firing
squad on orders of “Commanding General” Paul Levitz, but
their sentence is commuted at the last minute to becoming the payload of an
Intercontinental Ballistic Missile aimed at Adolf Hitler’s headquarters in
Berlin. The rocket ignites and immediately veers off course into outer space,
leaving the Commandos’ immediate futures uncertain. Eventually it was shown
that they had been captured by Brainiac in Action
Comics #868, and that would be the basis for a miniseries from 2000,
written by Tim Truman and drawn by Scot Eaton, but I never read those comics.
And besides, by then the inherent weirdness was out of the bag, rendering most
tongue-in-cheek reminiscences irrelevant. The original series, which is
available in one trade paperback collection, is worth checking out for people
even remotely interested, because the characterization is pretty good and the
bizarre situations the Creature Commandos find themselves in are quite
compelling. And, if nothing else, you get to see an arrogant white guy berate sad,
ugly people. It’s like having your own physical trainer without paying any gym
membership fees.

"I treat you with the same derision and contempt that I do my own family!"

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